Electric vehicles have been breaking away from their luxury roots for the last several years. Once prohibitively expensive, the EV market now includes options such as Chevrolet's Bolt, which can be purchased for under $30,000 (or even cheaper with federal tax credits).
This year, those with bigger families can get into the action, too, as Kia is set to unveil the EV9: an electric, three-row SUV with a speculated price tag of around $60,000. This figure is lower than the cost of many premium electric SUVs on the market — like the Tesla 2023 Model X SUV, which will set you back over $100,000 — while still offering a range of 300 miles.
Not only that, but this particular SUV stands as proof that EVs are entering the mainstream, intended as products for the general public with an increasing diversity of models, capabilities, and purposes to fit a wide variety of different customers.
This is great news. A wider selection of affordable EVs, and their broad normalization, as a result, will accelerate the number of EVs on the road, which will positively impact our planet.
Conventional dirty energy-powered vehicles create polluting gases while in operation. These gases end up in our atmosphere, where they trap heat from the sun and raise temperatures around the globe. Higher temperatures lead to rising sea levels, more hurricanes, extreme weather events, droughts, and other troubling phenomena.
Kia has plans to have even more EV models for sale by 2026, which follows similar efforts by other big-name manufacturers.
The momentum behind EVs appears to be enduring — and growing. In 2022, sales increased by two-thirds from 2021, which translates to 5.8% of all vehicles sold.
In short, it's no longer Tesla's game, and in a few years, the company may no longer be leading the world in EV market share. Instead, drivers may have countless affordable options to choose from when looking to buy an EV.
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